The Window
by crackinthecup
Summary: Multifarious are the ways of the mind and Annatar knows how to twist them all. Silverfisting. Warnings inside.


**Warnings:** non-con; character death; torture.

* * *

 _gaslighting—[noun] a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory, perception, and sanity_

X X

This feels wrong. No—this _is_ wrong. This—the coverlet beneath his palm, silken to the touch as he rolls it between his fingers, warm where magmatic heat pulses across it from the body curled next to him; breath— _his_ breath, tucked as he is into Celebrimbor, each tiny exhalation merging into the softness of a rhythm. Celebrimbor knows that if he but shifts upon his side he will see those golden eyes closed in sleep, those handsome features mellowed, and such tenderness will beat within him, seep and uncoil and make him warm with love, that he will lean forward to ghost a kiss against his temple and card the spill of his hair back over his shoulder.

This is not what he remembers.

He remembers screams—his own, though in truth it is one turbid pool of agony rippling with his captor's vicious words; it all hurts the same. Pain defines him, ebbing and flowing, always there, always blooming like charnel, thorn-ripped roses, and it is long after he forgets his own name that _no_ still hollows his throat and wheezes past his lips.

Just that—just that it _doesn't_ anymore. There is no pain, not even the dull thud of discomfort he thinks he might have felt between the numbness of unconsciousness and crepuscular awareness. _Tyelperinquar_. The name chimes so beautifully, so readily, and—and it shouldn't; he remembers his own identity crushed out of him and the void filled by brutality, his name forsaken somewhere between madness and regret. He knows he should feel elated that now his mouth curves so smoothly around the syllables, but the mere fact that for so long, _so long_ , his lips were bloodied, forever snarled into a grimace, grates and grinds and sends him snapping into a sitting position.

He beholds his own chambers and—surely this must be a dream, a viscous memento to still the last fluttering shreds of his sanity in honey-like suspension. Disbelief that longs to be something else lulls him, and languidly he surveys the room, slowly he presses his bare feet to the wooden floor and feels the grain, the scrape, the coolness, and finds them all familiar; finds everything familiar—there, his desk, down the short flight of steps from the bedchamber proper, groaning underneath the load of his scattered papers; there, the stain on the cream-colored divan, careless wine splotching the fabric into a dark blush, and he recalls his own eagerness when he scrabbled forward for his quill with metal alloys stringing themselves all potent in his mind and Annatar laughed and laughed as the goblet clattered half-empty to the floor and he did not even hear the clamor … Everything except—

Except Ost-in-Edhil. His bedroom window does not overlook the rows of poplars swaying across the inner courtyard. His bedroom window is not a window at all. It is a cross of black paint bled onto the wall, a sloppy job, and there, in the topmost right-hand corner, a compact little glaring sun.

"Awake so early?"

Celebrimbor did not hear him. He whips round, and instinct he cannot name spurs him backward, half-stumbling. Annatar. No—not Annatar, not anymore, unless ruin be classed a gift. _Sauron_. And yet—

And yet he does not look like Sauron. His face is still soft, so strangely soft, in this dream-chamber. He is naked, no cruel armor, no flash of steel tapering in his hand, naked but for the silken trousers clinging low upon his hips, matching Celebrimbor's own in all but color: Annatar's black, his a rippling silver. There is no gold to glint and scorch but for the simmer in his irises, the cascade of his hair. Celebrimbor clutches at his forehead.

"Is anything the matter?" Warm fingers are gentle at his wrist, drawing his hand away, and the concern in Annatar's eyes, the crease between his eyebrows—it all looks so genuine. But no, no, it cannot be, and Celebrimbor wrenches himself away with a poorly stifled snarl. And yet at the hurt spasming across Annatar's face, guilt bursts within his chest, crashing against his ribs. This is _impossible_ —

"The window, Annatar," he bites out, still keeping himself well away from the Maia. "You filth, you're nothing but a morass of lies, and they are seeping out of your reach."

"Tyelpë—" Annatar begins, and it is not cruelty that lashes, or sick pleasure that revels, but tentative confusion bleating through a voice entirely too well-meaning. Celebrimbor cannot allow himself to hear the end of the sentence.

"No, you won't do this," he shouts, he steps further back, as if that could ever stop the fiend. "The scum choking the ruins of your master's halls is where you belong, Sauron."

But—but where he expects anger, the usual sneer, the sting of a slap, there is only a widening of the eyes, the pallor of horror.

"Tyelpë—sweetling, who do you think I am?" He should flee, tackle Annatar to the ground, smash that smug countenance, he knows, he _knows_ , but the creature's words leave him gaping, casting about for replies and finding them all void, and in the suction of certainty that follows he lets Annatar guide him to the bed and settle him upon its edge. The Maia kneels before him, haloed in glowing solicitude, and reaches for his hands, enclosing them within the too-warm cradle of his palms.

"That is not my name, Tyelpë,'' he explains with patience so sincere that it writhes across Celebrimbor's flesh like dying maggots. ''Annatar I came to you countless years past, and Annatar I still am today. And have I not proven the worth of my name? Have I not given you, _us_ , so much? They say he is gone, Tyelpë. A shadow of malice, no more, skulking in the ruptured East. What picture would he paint, hmm, knelt here in his undergarments?'' He intends that last remark as a joke, an uplifting of the mouth, an uncertain little quirk that does little to overthrow Celebrimbor's unease; the Elf does not bother with the slip-shod smile half drooping off his lips. His stare wavers, his eyes flick about the room, and still this cannot be, but mere _hours_ ago—

The window. Bleeding and black, plastered onto the wall. And that mocking blob of yellow. Celebrimbor swallows. His gaze bends back to the creature holding his hands— _Sauron_. That truth has been carved out of bone and sealed with blood for the past _weeks_ , he cannot just come in here and lie and expect him to—

"Whyever do you glance out the window, my sweet?" Annatar is half-turned now, staring at the grotesque travesty on the wall. A jerk of the hands, fingers around that exposed throat, it would be so easy, a snap of vertebrae and all this could end—

Celebrimbor does not move.

Annatar shifts to look up at him again. "What do you see, Tyelpë?" Gentleness should be gutted by that tongue; it should shrivel and splinter upon the creature's chiseled teeth. It has no business sounding so familiar, like a half-forgotten voice, his mother's fingers pulling through his hair, separating thick clumps of his locks in that brisk way of hers, working them into a topiary of braids.

"What do I see?" he blusters, disturbed; he yanks his hands out of that sliding grasp only to fist them in the blankets creased about him. "What do I see? I—how can you even ask that? Look at it! I—it—"

Annatar glances back. "Everything looks as it has always looked," he says, and there is no trace of lie or laughter in his voice, just the soothing susurrus of magma whispering through the veins of the earth. Celebrimbor can see him schooling his features into neutrality, out of the frown passing in a quiver over his face. The Maia presses touch upon him again, resting his hands upon his knees this time—so confoundedly warm, always have been. Celebrimbor's breath shallows as senseless fear gushes from a place he might once have dreamed of; he feels trapped between that suffocating warmth and the bedsheets contorting behind him, so much so that Annatar's question is almost drowned out by the drumbeat of panic rattling his ribs. ''Tell me, do you not see the same?''

Yet the question does register, and that dreadful wing-flutter in Celebrimbor's chest peters out into the deep stillness of disbelief. ''No,'' he barks. ''No, _Annatar_ , I do not. There is but a sun scrawled in the corner, as by a child, enclosed within two perpendicular stripes of black.''

The creature's mouth tightens. When he speaks, the sorrow in his voice seems to crawl out of some dying thing coiled round his heart. "Can you not see the trees? The sky?"

"There are no trees—or—or sky!"

"Tyelpë—" Annatar visibly swallows the syllables, reining them back in. He stands with nary a rustle of fabric, and of a sudden he seems to have lost all color, as though ash were dusted along the curve of his cheekbone. "Stay here and rest. Sleep, if you can. I shall inform the Jewel-smiths that you are unwell." And with that he shrugs on unadorned black robes and sweeps out of the room, and Celebrimbor screams into the silence pressing against his eardrums.

X X

He jerks awake with a start and a shiver, with frigid water sluicing down bare flesh. And—he is bound to a crude metal chair, wrists and ankles chafed into soreness by hefty coils of rope.

"Well, well. I cannot have you fainting on me, can I? No kind host would be amenable to that." A voice. No— _the_ voice. His voice. It scrapes along the skin as a blade-edge, burrowing down to the very bone with the loathsome hint of effulgence floating about it, corroding blood and tissue; it gusts across the nape of Celebrimbor's neck from somewhere behind him, and he clamps down the instinctive retch scampering up from his belly.

"Annatar—" It is just as well that he does not know what to say; for a hand slithers in from behind and fingers stab into his jaw, forcing his head back until he has no choice but to blink upward into golden eyes.

"I give you my word that I will make everything end if you but cooperate. It is a little thing, in the end, what I need from you. And then every hurt will be soothed, you will be whole and hale once more, and happy, Tyelpë. I _want_ you by my side. This is not how things should be. Surely you do not wish for continuation?''

His mind is reeling, he was right, he was right, but then how— _how_?

"I hate you," he enunciates as though the words were venom, he lets them curdle and sour, and Annatar releases his hold.

"No," the creature sighs, ghosting away to finger some implement of tinkling metal on the far side of the room, away from Celebrimbor's eyes. "You do not, Tyelpë." Celebrimbor thinks the _not yet_ was merely pressed into his mind, or else picked out of the crackling air, teased from between the jangle of needles in the box nestled in Annatar's palm.

He squirms as Annatar kneels between his parted thighs; he stutters out a cry as the flesh of his upper arm is pinched and held and prodded with the gleaming point of a needle.

"I have no desire to do this," Annatar confesses, he pauses and in pleading honesty glances up at him. "Please, Tyelpë, let me end this. Let me set you free."

Celebrimbor spits his bloodied disdain at his feet; he grits his teeth and lets defiance temper the steel in his eyes.

X X

"Shh, shh, darling."

Awake once more, and Celebrimbor struggles, rages against that hateful awareness. The needles still seem to protrude, to jingle and hop to the jaunty tune of Annatar's fingers flicking against his abused flesh. They were—everywhere, and Celebrimbor himself nothing but an immense pin cushion, each silver-impaled eyelet weeping watery vermilion. But he does not lurch against unyielding rope, but against silk and warm hands.

"You were having a nightmare," Annatar explains, pushing him flat on his back once more. "Just a nightmare. I'm here now, Tyelpë. Everything will be all right."

The Maia's voice festoons him in argent sweetness, and its steady cadence drips sleep into every tissue. Celebrimbor remembers the animal terror as each glint of sharpened silver transmuted into a pinprick of pain; he remembers Annatar's hand between his legs, grasping him in earnest however much he strained his thigh muscles, however much he tried to close his legs and halt such ignominy, still the knotted ropes refused to give an inch. He remembers his own pleas, and when that failed, when his voice scratched and oozed out of him in terrified whimpers, when his stiffened length bobbed with the weight of the needles pierced through the underside—he remembers and achingly, fervidly wishes he wouldn't.

He lets Annatar weld honeyed kisses to the crown of his head, his forehead, his lips. He chokes down the thickness clogging his throat; it hurt so much, and he should be stronger than this, he is the grandson of Fëanor, flames should roar, engulf him in greeting, he cannot be burned to a crumbling crisp. But he almost was; each lick of the needles into his flesh was excruciating, and if he had remembered, if anything but the physical could have smashed through his mind, damning, vile words would have spilled like the innards of some gutted beast; pleas, entreaties, _confessions_ ... No, no, not _that_ , never—

"Focus on me, Tyelpë. It's all right now. You're all right." Within his arms Annatar enfolds him; to his chest he coaxes his head. As he listens to the _thump-thump-thump_ of the Maia's heartbeat, for one mad, sordid moment unbidden comfort suffuses Celebrimbor, and through his weariness he cannot quite muster true odium against it.

"Hush, sweetling, hush now." To him Celebrimbor clings, and he despises it, despises the hot shame of his tears even as they spill over his cheeks to soak into Annatar's shoulder. He longs to push him away, and yet somehow the clasp of his hands tightens, drawing him closer.

"Just say the words, Tyelpë," Annatar murmurs, stroking his hair, meticulous in tucking the strands behind his ear. "Seeing you like this makes me _ache_. Please work with me."

"I can't ... I _can't_ ..."

"Oh, my beauty. Do not do this to yourself."

"The window," Celebrimbor blubbers. " _The window._ "

X X

He stands before the window and he laughs and laughs and laughs until his abdomen cramps. He ransacks the room; he tears at the pillowcases until blood clusters beneath his fingernails; his papers flutter through the air, cupboards vomit their contents across the floor, metal goblets sprawl ringing and crunched over the rug. He finds no weapon.

And when Annatar slips into the room, when his eyes widen almost ludically and for one reckless moment he almost grins, Celebrimbor is merely slouching upon the edge of the bed, staring at the window. He is no longer laughing.

X X

In the end he is broken. In the end his body fails him.

He sees the poplars now. Splintered, charred, sere; felled in a fractured landscape of loss, as much as Ost-in-Edhil itself; its laughter and its jewels, its wide skies and towers of twisting delicacy to rival Tirion, its busy, busy hands and open hearts—all dashed to rubble, and henceforth the city will birth nothing but tired smoke.

And it is all because of him.

There is no residue of energy left in him to propel his muscles into wriggling protest when they lash him to the wooden cross. Mercy is but a cluster of syllables his lips have forgotten how to form.

He thinks that each black-fletched arrow squelching into him might taste of mercy. Or maybe it is simply the spurt of blood upon his tongue; he does not throttle his screams this time, as the callous, wondrous point pierces flesh.

He screams, and Annatar frowns and orders it ended; orders his new banner upon the battlefield.

It _is_ mercy, in the end. His eyelashes stick together with unshed tears, and the faces of his kin are but a blurry vista of accusation. _Is it worth it?_ So Annatar has asked him, time and time again. _Yes_ , he would say, but the steel of his will is curling away like the memory of smoke, wafting beyond the boundary of flesh along with his _fëa_.

 _In the end_ —

In the end his body is a window chipped into shards, screeching open upon horror as trumpets blare and banners are unfurled.


End file.
